Look to Europe. Think how you'll feed yourself when unemployment or high prices become a problem. That will be the long duration thing to plan and prep for. Short term? Weather event most likely. If you try to meet all your needs to be completely independent for a few weeks that should cover most things.

I think it will be multiple things that just get the situation spiralling out of control ... but as one of the biggest risk factors I would see the politics and/or economics. Or maybe during all the political and economical fuss that goes on in TV we all miss some major malfunction with a power plant or some kind of testing facility (in medicine or so).

However, in my opinion this will go on longterm. Anything more immediate could only be the weather.

I worry more about the lower level catastrophes: long term job loss, injury that reduces pay to workman's comp, loss of partner that puts the full burden of the household on one member, major storms or house fire that wipes out almost everything, the short-term weather situations that make me want to stay way away from anything resembling a store leading up to and after it strikes

When it comes to "big" disasters, I look at what has driven various other disasters. Jamaica was just pointed out somewhere on IPN. There's also Haiti, Argentina, Russia, the rest of Europe caught in a balancing act with the Euro and dependency on euro nations, and Africa. Going back in history, collapses and even major discords that led to war and atrocity tend to fall back on money (there are exceptions, mostly religious based).

Had money not been enough of an impetus to create desperate people willing to jump on a crazy train, the world wars might not have happened. Riots in several nations have been caused by one racial or religious group gaining equality and the fear of job loss (look at the Northern cities when slaves were freed as well as Croatia and some of the spazzing about immigrants in the SW, although I work with enough nurseries to know that a lot of white Americans won't do the work the immigrants are taking even when given the chance, even when hiring veterans). One-child was partially spurred by the cost of children, and now you have new fights because one-child means fewer to support Mom and Pops in their old age.

Even here, you've got people who say they want less government influence, but who rattled their cages and gnashed their teeth at the idea of subsidies not being renewed, subsidies that keep the price of milk low instead of $8/gal. If fuel and grain subsidies ever went away ($$$) you'd run into a nightmare of increased costs dealing with every agricultural product (every product, really, but groceries would get hit first and hardest, especially corn-dependent meats and dairy and then pretty much everything in the center aisles of the supermarkets).

Finances have been the root of stability and instability from Rome onward. Individual self-sufficiency is part of the buffer, with more local-grown produce and a shift in diet (at least for Americans) necessary because it's just not financially sustainable to spend more than an end product is currently worth to create it and get it to markets and tables over the distances it currently travels. There's just too many people to support to give up mechanized and infinitely unsustainable growing methods at the moment, just not enough land for everybody to have or live off a small farm. We got too big and too fat off cheap grains. There's that tie-in again - "cheap," right back to money.

I cant say, one disaster. If I were (Goddess Forbid) asked on doomsday preppers what I was prepping for...I would have no 10 second sound bite. I would have to answer, "I'm preparing for The Perfect Storm". Once you enter onto the curve part of any hockey stick graph...things speed up. Several curves are happening at once at this point in History. Credit overshoot. Population overshoot, Energy overshoot, Prosperity Overshoot, Expectation Overshoot...Government Overreach, Corporate and Individual corruption, Environmental Collapse, Collapsing Infrastructure, Scapegoating due to not accepting personal responsibility, leading to religious, political and neo tribal wars, People demanding the status quo or the lives of their grand parents lived, The demographic bubble, The housing bubble, The stock market bubble, Lack of property Rights, Lack of Squatting Rights, Super storms, Super viruses, Super Solar storms and really tiny wires that we depend on that will fry like steel wool attached to a battery, Nuclear plants without enough Diesle for their generators...within flood zones, Left wing Dictators, Right Wing Dictators, Deforestation, mager Canadian corporations that will sue small countries into bankruptcy because they enact laws to stop deforestation or wont allow them to pour poisons into the locals drinking water, fracking my well water, More plastic particles than plankton particles in sea water that is acidic enough to melt baby shell life and proto plankton shells that are the bottom of the food chain and of the oxygen chain, all happening before I die and Im creeping toward 50.....I could keep going but I have to stop and breath before I pass out..............

0 x

I have a Tactical Harness and I have a Tool Belt. The Tool Belt is more Useful.

cernunnos5 wrote:I cant say, one disaster. If I were (Goddess Forbid) asked on doomsday preppers what I was prepping for...I would have no 10 second sound bite. I would have to answer, "I'm preparing for The Perfect Storm". Once you enter onto the curve part of any hockey stick graph...things speed up. Several curves are happening at once at this point in History. Credit overshoot. Population overshoot, Energy overshoot, Prosperity Overshoot, Expectation Overshoot...Government Overreach, Corporate and Individual corruption, Environmental Collapse, Collapsing Infrastructure, Scapegoating due to not accepting personal responsibility, leading to religious, political and neo tribal wars, People demanding the status quo or the lives of their grand parents lived, The demographic bubble, The housing bubble, The stock market bubble, Lack of property Rights, Lack of Squatting Rights, Super storms, Super viruses, Super Solar storms and really tiny wires that we depend on that will fry like steel wool attached to a battery, Nuclear plants without enough Diesle for their generators...within flood zones, Left wing Dictators, Right Wing Dictators, Deforestation, mager Canadian corporations that will sue small countries into bankruptcy because they enact laws to stop deforestation or wont allow them to pour poisons into the locals drinking water, fracking my well water, More plastic particles than plankton particles in sea water that is acidic enough to melt baby shell life and proto plankton shells that are the bottom of the food chain and of the oxygen chain, all happening before I die and Im creeping toward 50.....I could keep going but I have to stop and breath before I pass out..............

C5, in my opinion, you nailed it! Empires have come and gone, economic collapses have happened, but we have never put this much stress on the planet. No matter how stable any of our economic/societal systems could be (and they are not currently stable), there is absolutely NO WAY the earth can support our population. It is inevitable that nature will cull the population to bring back the balance. That will more than likely come via some combination of weather disasters, famine, and pandemics and when you bring those together with an unstable economic climate and the unreasonable, unsustainable use of and rapidly dwindling supply of natural resources on Earth, that spells disaster. Period. Even if we could miraculously fix the economic situation, the population is still just too big to be sustainable.

perfessor and c5 hit the head on the nail, lightly . I think my own articulation is a simplistic generalization as well Think climate change as disruption from that we have known and depended on , global overshoot , people dependant on artificial systems that are unsustainable . So with sun activity and other aspects like CO 2 we have melting ice and pole air currents disrupted . We have methane release as a feedback enforcing further warming . We are seeing air current disruptions with more flooding, drought and stronger storms. Ice melting leads to weight displacement on the tectonic plates and more earth quakes and volcanic release ( which played havoc with fukushima with the tsunami and is perhaps the biggest out of control ongoing nuclear disaster we have had to date but won't be the last ) , we have the nature of agriculture shifting to meet the demands for MORE affordable food with GMO and dependance on a depleting stock of easy to use oil , growing populations who want entitlement to better lifestyle . Basic science that photosynthesis falters at 37 degrees c . You get refugees leaving regions their own generations may well have rendered inhospitable and social and economic strife ensues when millions of refugees migrate and assimilate into other areas with already burgeoning populations . Disease vectors fungal, bacterial etc are finding new environments with climate change affecting a lot of our lifeforms and will affect us , think of broadening areas of malaria and such. Also ocean rise and disasters of larger storm surges , the cost of replacing infrastructure born on the taxed here , who are also those working to provide for the rest who are not working . Social preasures, of economics meeting the consumption of food, water, energy and other resources is all getting more competitive . Forest dying from disease, ( lack of genetic diversity in some cases, climate change, forest fire, pests , drought and just getting mowed down by people further affects the environment as a whole . key species being lost like our pollinators . It is is all interreacting cause and effects brewing that perfect storm and converging at an increasing pace . People will be more stressed and react , human nature going to create conflict more often than peaceful resolution and innovation and conservation when their countries are thirsty or power supplies are threatened ... trying to visualize it is like putting together the picture from a huge jigsaw puzzle , each piece in conjunction with its position relevent to other pieces is complex but we have messed with it with the overall balance of the picture with overpopulation affecting every other potential of the pieces as they come together mix in those who are quick to profit off all this by manipulation or simply feeding our own consumption . This is a flip comment , incomplete but some of this is what is looking catastrophic to me .